“The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed. The day of my daddy’s funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime

-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old. People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life.”

In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.

With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Un

der the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome youn

g widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn’t save Mama, but maybe she can save him.

As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permane

It’s a very simple observation, one that you innately know, but when the idea is verbalized, you’re amaze

d at how brilliant it is. I’m not saying I’m brilliant, although my Mom would disagree, what

I am saying is people, particularly women believe if they can change, they can change their lives.

Growing up in a tiny one stop light town in SC, I remember seeing women come into my mom’s little beauty shop, dog tired, some just happy to be there, some with all kinds of problems. My mom listened to them and made them beautiful. There were a lot of elderly women who didn’t drive in our town and she’d lock up the shop and go pick them up so they could have their hair done. Most of those homebound women were so lonely. They were grateful to get out of the house, to be around a bunch of women to talk, gossip a little, laugh a lot. I don’t care what anybody says about the outside of a woman not making a difference, I saw it then and I see it in today in my friends and in myself.

REVIEW

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I loved the book cover and the Book trailer.I am also glad that I was told that this reads more as a YA or NA book then Women's Fiction.She did keep me interested the whole time I was reading I wish it had been more about Zora and Sara Jane at Beauty School, Zora's first job, and what the hair dressers really feel about all the gossip they hear.less about her personal life.Kim Boykin has a new fan if she can do this well with her first book I can't wait to see what the next one will be about, hint Zora in her 40's?